Welcome to Archer’s Queer Fashion Files! Each month, we interview trendsetters and tastemakers, showcasing the diversity and talent of the fashion world. You can check out all episodes of our Queer Fashion Files here.

This month, our Queer Fashion Files heads to New York City! In Episode 27, Hailey Moroney chats to Halle Robbe, founder of @GirlsCarryingShit and pinky, about setting boundaries online, expansive definitions of ‘girl’, and the shit we carry both physically and figuratively.

Halle Robbe is a creative based in New York City best known as the founder and creative force behind the Instagram project @GirlsCarryingShit and as editor-in-chief of pinky. She started Girls Carrying Shit in 2021 as an offhand, humorous exploration of a shared everyday experience – carrying more than you can reasonably hold – and it quickly grew into a visual community with tens of thousands of followers.

All images by: Hailey Moroney

Hailey Moroney: Halle, I don’t know where to start because I’m obsessed with everything you create! Girls Carrying Shit (GCS) is quite literally my favourite thing on the internet. The community grew pretty quickly – how was navigating its popularity and rise?

Halle Robbe: Thank you! Not gonna lie, it’s been a lot, especially in the last year or so. It’s surreal to have something that started as just me taking photos of my friends completely transcend my circle.

At this point, I don’t think I can really conceptualise how big it’s gotten. I mean, obviously I see the notifications and the DMs and everything, but most of the time, it feels very contained to my phone. Then someone recognises me in line at the movies, or my sister texts me that someone mentioned my page in class, or I tell someone what I do at a party and they get excited, and it registers for a moment. Like Oh, yeah. GCS’s followers don’t just exist inside my phone! A lot of them even live in the same city as me, and I can bump into them at any time. Hi.

The nice thing is, since my face isn’t on it, a lot of people don’t know I run it until I tell them, so I can control when the vibe potentially shifts from two people meeting at a party to them meeting someone they follow. Sometimes I don’t tell people at all. It’s sort of the best of both worlds in that way.

HM: pinky is the print publication that grew out of the GCS community, exploring the metaphorical, mental and emotional things non-men carry, expanding beyond physical objects. What was the drive to use the momentum of GCS to grow it into a print publication?

HR: I would get messages from time-to-time that were like, “I’m carrying X, Y, Z, and the weight of the world on my shoulders.” So, I knew there was an appetite for discussing the non-physical things we carry.

 I also felt that some of those conversations were too personal to be had online – at least, if I wanted people to really open up and be honest. It’s funny because, when I was growing up, the internet was mostly used anonymously for ‘safety’. And now it’s actually the more unusual thing to not have an online presence attached to your legal name.

Anyway, my point is: I wanted to have candid conversations with my audience without everyone and their mother (literally) being able to access them with a quick Google search. For example, in the first issue, we tackled the question of “What is a girl?” through a gender-expansive lens. That’s not a conversation that I want every random internet troll to be able to chime in on, or to share via copy/paste with their freaky incel group chats. Keeping the magazine offline creates a natural barrier.

Obviously, those people can still find it. But they’d have to be looking for it and also pay for it – that’s a pretty decent deterrent in this economy. I also just love physical media, specifically books and magazines.

When I was in elementary school, everyone in my class got to ‘write’ a book and then someone’s mom took them all to Michael’s and had them bound like actual books. I remember it was the coolest feeling ever, having an idea go from only existing in my imagination to being something I could physically hold in my hands. I ended up volunteering at a youth literary magazine in high school, then my college’s literary magazine, and then I started pinky a few years out of college. So in addition to my initial, complex answer, there’s also a simple one: I just wanted to. 

HM: Was there a lightbulb moment for you that GCS could turn into a platform that interviews the likes of Zohran Mamdani and red carpet attendees? Did you have this mapped out, or did you utilise the momentum as the flow?

HR: I’ve been an outspoken, intersectional feminist since I was a teenager with internet access. The premise of the page is based on a form of inequality non-men experience (a lack of pockets, hello!), so I always knew I wanted to use my platform for more than just sharing photos.

I’ve been posting about politics on GCS since the beginning, when I had fewer than 10k followers. I wanted it to be crystal clear from the beginning that this was not just a page for cisgender women/girls, the way ‘girl’ pages often are.

Like I mentioned, I used pinky to explore a lot of those topics, too, and thought maybe, eventually – in, like, 10 years – we’d get to interview high profile public figures. I did not expect it to happen as fast as it did. But around issue 5 (in March 2025), I got a DM from someone who worked at a production company asking if I’d be interested in collaborating for an upcoming theatrical release. I assumed they wanted me to carry props related to the film or something, but instead they invited me to cover a premiere, as press. I went from having never been on a red carpet to standing between Entertainment Weekly and Access Hollywood, interviewing A-List talent. Thankfully, it went well.

I later found out that the reason they’d asked me was because one of my followers – shout-out to Ash! – worked on their PR team and suggested working with me. I’m eternally grateful to her for saying my name in the room, and I’m so proud that I’ve built a network of girls where we create opportunities for each other like that. A similar thing led to the Mamdani interview; one of my mutuals, Alexis, was working on the campaign and invited me to join a group of creators that were being given special access to campaign events to create content. I was already voting for Zohran, so of course I was in.

Basically, the short answer is, no, I didn’t have this mapped out. I just built a community of like-minded people, and the rest worked itself out.

HM: The ‘read me first’ story on your GCS Instagram is iconic. Reminding people that you’re a real person behind the account is so vital and not done enough. How did it feel implementing that boundary with your audience?

HR: It was such a relief. I mean, hundreds of thousands of people are in my DMs. Most of them are fine, but some people are way too comfortable saying things to me or demanding things from me, a stranger. I needed some kind of filter.

Thankfully, setting boundaries with people has never been an issue for me. I’ve always been good at speaking up for myself. I used to get in a lot of trouble for ‘talking back’, but now I think it’s one of my greatest strengths. Since I’ve started speaking more on GCS in general, I’ve gotten many messages from girls saying that they channel me when they need to be assertive. It sounds corny but, genuinely, that’s my proudest accomplishment through GCS: showing girls how to stand up for themselves.

HM: Do you have any words of wisdom for younger queers following similar paths to yours?

HR: If you have an idea, don’t worry too much about what the end goal is, just see how far you can take it. By acting on your ideas at all, you’re already doing more than most people will ever do.

HM: What’s next for you, for GCS and for pinky?

HR: GCS has officially gotten too big for me to run it out of my apartment anymore, so we’re getting our own studio soon, which is exciting!

Once that’s settled, I’m just hoping to be present for everything I’ve already set in motion. I’m so grateful for all of the opportunities I’ve gotten in the last year, now I just want a moment to feel it.

If you want to pitch an idea for Archer’s Queer Fashion Files, email pitch@archermagazine.com.au with ‘QUEER FASHION FILES’ in the subject line. You can check out the rest of our Queer Fashion Files here.